


Noonday Breakfast

by icarus_chained



Series: La Nuit [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Aftermath, Aliens, Alternate History, Dimension Travel, Domestic, Gen, Lovecraftian, Mornings, Original Fiction, Portals, Slice of Life, Superheroes, World War II
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 11:34:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7638502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/icarus_chained/pseuds/icarus_chained
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Concept sketch for a new universe. A little glimpse of daily life at Chateau Lamont, the hillside residence of Monique Lamont, socialite and businesswoman, also known as La Nuit, lovecraftian superhero and protector of Silver City.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Noonday Breakfast

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, I'm basically having fun with a vaguely lovecraftian female Batman, what of it? Heh. Though mostly this is about Etta. I like Etta. I'm having fun with her.

The household at Chateau Lamont didn't tend to wake too early. Well, there wasn't any call for it. Nighttimes were busy, and mornings were uncivilised. Monique Lamont, billionaire, European heiress and head of the house, had always maintained that, and given the particular terms of their employment, most of her staff tended to agree with her. Her business partners too, though that had been harder fought. She'd won in the end, though, and these days she never had a meeting earlier than two in the afternoon, and never had breakfast earlier than noon.

Etta'd never minded that. If she was honest, a life of long nights and late sleeps had been her dream ever since she was a little girl, living in an overcrowded house where folks got up at the crack of dawn to make enough money to be able to sleep again the next night. Breakfast at noon and no work until after midday was very far from being a problem for her. The night owl sensibility wasn't the only or even the first benefit of working for Ms Lamont, but it sure was pretty high up there.

She stood out on the drive for a bit, stretching idly, grounding herself down into the gravel and watching boats move down in the harbour for a few minutes. It was a nice day, she decided. Late spring, no longer cold but not quite warm just yet. Cool and clear, especially up here in the hills, away from the stink of Silver City itself. A day for swinging your arms in the breeze and tipping your cap up to let the sun shine on your face. Be almost a shame to climb into the car later, she thought, but hell. Driving the car was what she got paid for, and truthfully she wouldn't trade it for all the sunny spring days in the world.

She wouldn't trade it for money, either, and there'd been some who'd offered it to keep her out from behind the wheel. Nuts to them, though. They just didn't know skill when they saw it.

She rolled her shoulders once more, straightened up to twitch her uniform jacket back into place. Monique didn't tend to mind, but Etta liked things to be the way they should be. She liked things orderly, straight and crisp and like they had rules. So many things didn't, these days, so many things had lost all their rules in the war and what came after it. The little things, the things people could still control, Etta liked for those to be kept in line. It was a comfort and a small satisfaction, and she'd always thought that one should indulge in those wherever one found them. What was life if not a search for satisfaction, after all?

When she had herself to rights, she turned away from the sunshine and the harbour and loped up the steps into the house itself. The French architecture opened itself coolly before her, the entrance hall a refuge of pale marble, bright mirrors and shade. Etta smiled faintly, the good mood of the day curling her lips, and was about to head towards the breakfast room when Jameson materialised himself from down the kitchen corridor and hailed her. How he did that, she'd never figured out. There was nothing supernatural about it, Monique would have known, but the man always knew when someone was coming and somehow contrived to appear out of nowhere in front of them. That had gone interestingly the few times he'd pulled it on intruders. Interestingly for _them_ , mostly. Jameson had been in the war too. Etta had it on very good authority that he was not something you wanted to stumble onto in a dark, deserted corridor that by rights you shouldn't be in.

That never worried Etta. She came about, spread her hands and smiled at him as he drifted near. "Jameson," she said warmly, tipping her cap with a twinkle. "Need something? I'm bringing Monique down into the city this afternoon. I was just heading in to get her."

"I'm aware," he said, with that light, floating sort of voice of his. He reached out and gently cupped her elbow. Etta let him. She didn't let too many, but Jameson was always one of them. His white-gloved hand was always light and never disturbed the line of her sleeve. "I wanted to inform you before you left. Ms Lamont will be bringing some delicate equipment with her. I wanted to ask you to keep it in mind."

He said it without weight or affectation, his face carefully blank and disinterested. It always was, every time he said something like this. It'd been about four times a day, back when she'd started working with him. These days he limited himself to about once a month, maybe once a week if he was having a stressful time of things. It had grated on her at the start, but Etta knew it for what it was now. It wasn't a criticism. It was his way of worrying about her, since she didn't do that so well for herself anymore.

That happened sometimes. She'd heard it explained once or twice. People had a switch inside them, one that controlled how and when they got scared. Sometimes, if somebody lived through something big enough and bad enough, that switch got broken on them. If it broke one way, they couldn't turn their fear off, spent the rest of their lives afraid of everything. If it broke the other way, they couldn't turn the fear back on, even when they ought to. People like that, they got reckless, stopped being able to tell properly how dangerous a thing might be. There'd been stories, people walking straight into burning buildings just because they didn't see a reason not to anymore. It wasn't quite like that for Etta. She still had _some_ common sense. She just didn't tend to worry too much about things before she did them, that was all. It'd kill her if it killed her, but so far nothing had managed.

It wasn't really the reason she drove the way she drove, either. She'd been driving ambulances under fire long before Saint-Hubert and the hole in the world that ate her fear. Artillery wasn't usually a concern in Silver City, admittedly, but the way some people drove around here, there were times it would have been the least of anyone's worries. Etta wasn't as unusual as some people liked to pretend she was. She was just more skilled at it than most.

Jameson knew all of that. He did, he really did. He just liked to worry the way Etta liked to keep things straight. It was a comfort and a satisfaction to him, and Etta had no reason to take that kind of thing away from someone she liked. So she let him make up excuses once a month. Ms Lamont had something fragile with her, the car had just been cleaned, the police were overly interested after the last high speed escapade and needed a few days to calm down. Whatever he felt like on the day. She listened to him, she smiled and patted his arm, she promised him she'd keep it in mind. Sometimes, she even did. She had no fear to keep her cautious anymore, but a friend's peace of mind was a reason too.

"I'll make sure not to break anything on our way downtown," she said, patting his hand gently where it lay on her arm. "We'll take things smooth and steady, don't you worry."

Jameson pretended to believe her. There was not a single twitch of his expression to show his scepticism, which was quite an achievement given what Etta knew were the depths of it. He only inclined his head, a wry, grateful little smile tucked in the corner of his mouth, and drifted away from her to vanish down a bright, open corridor once more. Etta watched him go. It always pleased her to see the smoothness of it, to challenge the part of her mind that wanted to look away from so patently unobtrusive a thing. He was a joy to watch in action, was Jameson. She'd thought that from the first.

She didn't have all day to watch him waft around the place, though. Ms Monique Lamont might arrange her appointments to her own schedule, but once they _were_ made she was determined to keep them. A meeting at two o' clock was a meeting at two o' clock, neither sooner nor later, and may hell itself try to interfere with that. Hell itself _had_ tried, a time or two. Only once had it made any appreciable difference.

With that in mind, Etta shook herself a little bit, straightened her jacket just from habit, and made her way through to the breakfast room at last. They had an hour and a half to make the downtown offices still, but if she was going to be taking it 'smooth and steady', a bit of a headstart would do no harm.

Monique was ready and waiting for her when she stepped into the little sunlit salon. She'd have heard the conversation with Jameson, of course. There was the tiniest of smiles on her face as she tidied away her dishes, something very nearly a smirk, but Etta didn't take umbrage. She allowed that for someone like Monique, Etta and Jameson and indeed quite a lot of people must be very amusing indeed. Such were the perils of an employer of Monique's particular nature. Those, too, Etta had never particularly minded, although by the time they had become an option, she had already lost a great many of the things inside her that might once have cared. The war had changed a lot of things. Monique was only one of them, and Etta herself another.

"He's nervous today," Monique informed her lightly. "Do forgive him. There's been some news, something that's liable to make the next little while quite interesting indeed, and he's somewhat concerned about it. Make allowances for the next few days, won't you?"

Etta blinked at her. "News?" she asked. She didn't answer the other. She always made allowances for Jameson. Monique only asked for formality's sake. "I didn't hear anything. What sort of news?"

Monique _beamed_. It was a terrible sort of expression, the kind of bright, anticipatory delight that belonged on a face with more teeth. Which Monique might have, sometimes, but at the minute it was her human face she wore, the brown skin creased with age and wickedness, the black eyes shining with delight. Etta blinked placidly at her, a vague anticipation stirring in her own chest, as well as a brief twinge of guilt as she suspected that Jameson would shortly have reason to be worried and sceptical both. Smooth and steady rarely manifested themselves when Monique wore her faces like that.

"We are to have a visitor," Monique pronounced, slowly and delightedly, with a distinct purr in her voice. "One of the great capes, my dear. The Holystone himself shall be gracing our fair city with his presence." 

She came around the table towards Etta, her movements liquid and graceful, all her power so obvious and yet so neatly contained within the confines of her stylish cream suit. Even had she been human, Monique Lamont would have made a perpetually striking figure, a woman of wealth and power and decisive attitude who flinched at very little. For those who had seen things, though, for those who had seen the war in particular and the things that had come out of it, there was always that other element. That awareness, the sensation that here was something _other_ that had kept so many of them alive through the likes of Saint-Hubert. The war had torn the world up, in places had torn the world _through_ , and through the holes in those places had come other things. Capes, some of them, like the Holystone. Others monsters and villains to threaten a slowly recovering world. And things like Monique as well, who was not a cape, and yet not quite anything else either.

"... Is he here for La Nuit?" Etta asked mildly. It would explain Jameson's nervousness. A battle between Monique and someone as powerful as the Holystone would be ... very interesting. Yes. Silver City might wish for artillery yet. It would be unusual, though. The Holystone had a reputation for keeping to himself, rarely venturing outside his own city for anything less than apocalyptic circumstances, and almost never interfering with another established protector without severe provocation beforehand. Monique, equally reclusive, had never offered him that. As fearsome as her reputation as La Nuit could be, as much as people liked to debate whether she was a protector or a destroyer within her city's bounds, Holystone was simply not the sort of cape who would take issue with her without personal provocation first.

Even as Etta thought it, Monique was shaking her head, her anticipation lazy and delighted and without any of the sharpness that would have come with a personal affront. She flicked out a hand, dismissing the thought carelessly.

"He is here for a trio of his own enemies," she explained, grinning softly to herself. "He made a statement to the papers last night, announcing his intent to pursue them to our fair city and apologising for his trespass in doing so. He warned us of their danger, and offered a hope that the 'denizens of Silver City might aid in their capture before anyone should be hurt'. That part was meant for me, of course. The Holystone is too cautious and protective to wish ordinary humans into the line of fire. He hopes that I will help him, or at the least that I will not interfere, nor take offence at his presence."

Ah, Etta thought silently. So. Competitiveness rather than affront, then. Monique wished to find these new enemies before he arrived, to demonstrate very gently to him and to everyone else that her city was her domain and none but she could hunt there with impunity. She would be polite, because he had been first, but she would also be emphatic, because he had brought the world to watch and she would not flinch from the implicit challenge in that.

Oh, but Jameson did have reason to be nervous, didn't he? There were strange monsters loose in their city, outsiders come to wreak havoc, and shortly there would be two capes to come to blows over their capture, one of whom had power and endurance to stand in the face of a firebombing, and the other of whom was _Monique_. For those who still had the capability to be worried, there would shortly be every reason, and Jameson was ever among the first to realise that.

Exactly what he thought her driving would have to do with it, though, was another question entirely. Still. Small comforts and small satisfactions. She could never fail to make allowances.

"When does he arrive?" she asked, turning slightly to face back towards the door and invite Monique ahead of her. "You still have your two o' clock to get to, though since we'll be in town then we'll have leeway afterwards. I presume you want to see him?"

"Of course," Monique agreed airily, striding smoothly past Etta and into the hall. "From a distance, perhaps, but then for someone of his calibre there's little point in trying to hide. He's generally considered discreet, as capes go. There should be no trouble even if he sees through the human guise. He's the kind who'll keep my faces to himself."

Etta blinked rapidly, slipping ahead of her employer as they made the driveway and moving to hold open the rear door of the car. She hadn't considered that. As a facet of her new and less cautious nature, it was the kind of thing she tended to miss a lot these days. Of course it wasn't generally known that Monique Lamont, head of Sterling Enterprises and respected socialite and businesswoman, was not in fact a French-Algerian heiress who had come to Silver City upon fleeing Europe after the war, but rather an inhuman creature who had clawed her way through a hole in the world and hastily disguised herself as human to make her way among them. Nobody much had made any connection between the terrifying figure of La Nuit, monstrous protector of the city, and the calm, suited woman currently sitting placidly in Etta's car. That was fortunate, naturally. Things might be a great deal more complicated otherwise.

It made sense as well that someone like another cape would sense it faster, she thought, settling herself into the driver's seat. People like Etta, people who had seen the holes, could sense it somewhat. Someone born in them, or emerged into this world through them, would naturally sense it better. It had never really been an issue before. Other capes didn't come to Silver City. Not anymore, not for a few years now. But Holystone might change that yet, if he wasn't as discreet as Monique thought he was.

That was something else Jameson would have picked up faster, and something else he would have been worried about. Etta frowned faintly, feeling a pang of pity for him, and deliberately focused herself as they set off and began to pull out down the drive. She would be careful for him, then. It wouldn't change anything, could hardly make a difference to the actual problem, but she could at least grant him that much. Until circumstances demanded otherwise, smooth and steady it would be.

In a world of capes and monsters, after all, what else but these small comforts could carry the rest of them through?


End file.
